Eleven Just Say Yes: What’s New and What You Can Do
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Suggested Reading
My deep appreciation goes out to the families and young women who shared their stories in these pages. Also to the many dedicated professionals for their passion to impart knowledge that improves the odds for recovery from addiction for young women. To the parents of children with a substance use disorder who are committed to helping other such families. To the memory of Susan Zeckendorf, my longtime agent and dear friend. To Martha, my wonderful sponsor and friend: we were young alcoholics and drug users who took the help offered to us to recover from addiction and in four decades, we have never looked back. To my beloved daughter “Kim” (whose name, like that of all those who have shared their personal stories, has been changed to protect her privacy). You fought for your life, emerging from the depths of active addiction to become a vibrant example of recovery today. Finally, to the many young women and men and the parents I’ve met who are working toward recovery and to those I haven’t yet met. You are living proof there is hope for the future.
“Girls and young women use cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs for different reasons than boys and young men. [They] are more vulnerable than boys to substance abuse and addiction and its consequences.”
—The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASAColumbia)
An eminent physician who has worked for decades with young people suffering from addiction describes the drug crisis today in words that should shock and awe all of us: “We are experiencing the worst drug addiction epidemic in United States history.”1
Whether it’s called substance use, risky use, drug dependence, substance abuse, substance use disorder, substance use disease, addiction, or alcoholism, taking mood-changing, mind-altering chemicals that may become habit-forming can at any point be harmful to the user. The label may carry shades of different meanings, but it’s the destructive illness that matters. Experimenting with alcohol and/or other drugs will lead only some to heartbreak and addiction, but, like in Russian roulette, nobody knows when the gun will fire.
The statistics about people suffering from the effects of addiction to alcohol and/or a raft of other drugs, especially opiates and, above all, heroin, are so chilling you would think we’d all be out marching in the streets as people did about HIV/AIDS. To cite just one statistic: heroin deaths were up 39 percent in 2013 from the previous year.2 You’d think we’d be besieging our legislators en masse for more treatments that work, prevention strategies that our kids can actually relate to, and vaccines to halt the horrors of addiction. But before we get to that, let me pose a question: What parent wants to believe they have raised a drug addict or alcoholic before the reality of it explodes in his or her face? None who I have met or read about during the years I spent researching this book. And that includes me, the mother of a daughter who was addicted from her teens into her twenties. Many seem to think it’s a problem that won’t ever touch their kids (that would be me). Take a recent nationwide survey of a diverse group of some 2,500 parents, which found most parents of twelve- to twenty-four-year-olds say they’re not concerned about their kids’ possible use. About 80 percent of these parents think they would know how to read the signs (if, God forbid, their child somehow started experimenting), but were only able to identify two out of thirty-eight possible indications of kids’ using.3 Even scarier are the results from a survey of middle-schoolers from my own community that reports the majority of kids don’t think their parents would mind if they used drugs.
Reality comes crashing down when good, smart, nice young people use drugs.
If you’ve picked up this book out of concern for your child or a loved one’s possible addiction, you’re not alone: Risky substance use is being called the leading public healthcare problem for young people in America.4 Addiction originates before the age of twenty-one in 96.5 percent of cases.5 The most current data show 1.3 million Americans ages twelve to seventeen—that’s 5.2 percent of adolescents—had a substance use disorder in 2013, meaning an alcohol or drug dependence requiring treatment. Nearly another million teens were illicit drug users who did not meet the criteria for dependence, and 1.6 million reported recent binge drinking (there is no official breakdown for young adults older than seventeen).6
Let’s turn now to our daughters, our nieces, our granddaughters, and children of friends and neighbors. Again, girls are more likely than boys to intentionally abuse prescription drugs to get high. Among twelve- to seventeen-year-olds, girls are more likely than boys to abuse prescription drugs, pain relievers, tranquilizers, and stimulants.7 As I write this, girls and young women are the fastest-growing group of addicts in the country. Yes, you read that right. The government estimates 58 percent of the 7,800 people over the age of twelve who tried an illicit drug for the first time in 2013 were females.8 Approximately 8.6 million women are reported to be addicted: nearly 6 million women to alcohol and 2.6 million to other drugs.9
Those of us who have faced the searingly painful reality of a young woman’s risky use or dependence agonize over why. Why are so many girls and young women with so much promise using and abusing substances that are so harmful to their health? The reasons are both complex and enlightening. Among them: risky (or binge) drinking and drug use, including opiates (painkillers obtained legally or illegally, and heroin) have become de-stigmatized for many kids of this generation. Also, there is a sense of entitlement and empowerment connected to drinking and drugging for some young women today that is intimately and insidiously bound up with youth culture and advertising. Are we aware of the rise in binge drinking? It has increased to the point that it now affects about 30 percent of high school students and up to 60 percent in many colleges.10 Added to the mix may be marijuana, cocaine, Ecstasy, methamphetamine, “designer” drugs, and many others I will describe in later chapters. Another reason girls turn to substances is that with the onset of puberty they often experience depression, eating and body image disorders, and/or anxiety at a significantly higher rate than their male peers—who, on the other hand, have higher rates of autism and attention deficit disorder.11 Finally, and crucially, young women’s substance use is often fueled by the experience of abuse and/or trauma. It happens far more often than we like to think. Young women are very good at keeping secrets.
Above all, what’s driving our current worst-ever drug epidemic for young people is the widespread availability of prescription painkillers and heroin. Opiates have acquired a reputation for giving the user the best feeling in the world ever, a perfect way to resolve the stress and social anxieties that go along with being a teenager. And because of their fast-acting, highly addictive nature, opiates are causing more and more kids to become dependent, with disastrous consequences. Opiates are derived from naturally-occurring alkaloids in the opium poppy. In contrast, opioids are synthetic, produced in the laboratory (although the effects of opiates and opioids are virtually identical). These drugs induce feelings of euphoria and drastically reduce the perception of pain. Because of the way they are processed in the brain they are wickedly quick to create a need for more in the user. Often, the new user will start off taking pills, graduate to sniffing ground-up powdered pills, and in many cases go on to inject it. And since a main culprit—the prescription opioid painkiller Oxycontin—has been made tamper-proof, more and more kids are turning to a more available and cheaper opiate: heroin. It floods the country, trucked in from Mexico, and is much cheaper than prescription pain pills—and potent. As with other “street drugs,” there is no way for the user to ascertain the strength of a given batch of heroin nor its adulteration with other substances (such as the potent
